By Ray Pride Pride@moviecitynews.com

OSCILLOSCOPE IS HOT FOR A TEACHER

Posted Wednesday, February 13th, 2013 - No Comments »

 

Sundance Favorite Scheduled For Release This Year

 

(New York, NY) February 13, 2013—Oscilloscope Laboratories announced today that it has acquired North American rights to Hannah Fidell’s feature directorial debut A TEACHER.  The film premiered last month to critical and audience acclaim at the Sundance Film Festival and is headed to Austin next month where it will play South By Southwest.  O-Scope plans a theatrical, video-on-demand and digital release later this year.

Part psychological thriller and part provocative character study, A TEACHER explores the unraveling of a young high school teacher, Diana (Lindsay Burdge), after she begins an affair with one of her teenage students, Eric (Will Brittain).  What starts as a seemingly innocent fling becomes increasingly complex—and dangerous—as the beautiful and confident Diana gets fully consumed by her emotions, crossing boundaries and acting out in progressively startling ways. Lindsay Burdge delivers a deeply compelling and seamlessly naturalistic performance that brings us into the mind of an adult driven to taboo against her better judgment.

O-Scope’s David Laub and Dan Berger said, “A TEACHER is a remarkably assured debut, and demonstrates two immense new talents, one in front of and one behind the camera. We couldn’t be more excited to welcome the film into O-Scope’s ranks and present it to the world.”

Hannah Fidell said, “We’re so thrilled to be joining the Oscilloscope family.  Their films represent everything we love about cinema and we are honored A TEACHER has found such an ideal home.”

A TEACHER was produced by Kim Sherman and Hannah Fidell.

The deal was negotiated by David Laub and Dan Berger for Oscilloscope with ICM Partners on behalf of the filmmakers.  ICM Partners also represents Hannah Fidell and Lindsay Burdge.

 

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About Oscilloscope Laboratories:

 

Oscilloscope Laboratories is a film production and theatrical distribution entity launched in 2008 by Adam Yauch of Beastie Boys. Yauch modeled the company after the indie record labels he grew up around, choosing films and then releasing them with the same artistic integrity with which they were made.  The company, which is an extension of Yauch’s recording studio of the same name, has an in-house DVD distribution and production arm, and its paper packaging is reminiscent of the heyday of LP record jackets. All of the company’s plastic-free DVD packaging is printed on FSC Certified 80% post-consumer waste paper and produced in a carbon-neutral hydroelectric plant.  Previous and current releases include Lynne Ramsay’s Golden Globe® Nominated WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT KEVIN starring Tilda Swinton, John C. Reilly, and Ezra Miller; Marshall Curry’s Oscar-nominated documentary IF A TREE FALLS: A STORY OF THE EARTH LIBERATION FRONT; Oren Moverman’s Oscar-nominated THE MESSENGER starring Ben Foster, Woody Harrelson and Samantha Morton; Kelly Reichardt’s MEEK’S CUTOFF starring Michelle Williams; Evan Glodell’s Sundance hit BELLFLOWER; Kelly Reichardt’s WENDY & LUCY starring Michelle Williams; Anders Østergaard’s Oscar-nominated documentary BURMA VJ; Kurt Keunne’s acclaimed documentary DEAR ZACHARY; Bradley Rust Gray’s THE EXPLODING GIRL starring Zoe Kazan; Scott Hamilton Kennedy’s Oscar-nominated documentary THE GARDEN; Dylan Southern and Will Lovelace’s LCD Soundsystem documentary SHUT UP AND PLAY THE HITS; Ron Fricke and Mark Magidson’s SAMSARA; Andrea Arnold’s WUTHERING HEIGHTS, Matt Ross’s 28 HOTEL ROOMS, and the acclaimed documentaries TCHOUPITOULAS by Bill and Turner Ross and ONLY THE YOUNG by Jason Tippet and Elizabeth Mims.  Upcoming releases include Keith Miller’s Slamdance Grand Prize Winner WELCOME TO PINE HILL, Matteo Garrone’s Cannes Grand Prix-winner REALITY, Todd Berger’s IT’S A DISASTER, starring David Cross, Julia Stiles, and America Ferrara; Rowan Athale’s WASTELAND, Andrew Dosunmu’s MOTHER OF GEORGE, and Omar Mullick and Bassam Tariq’s THESE BIRDS WALK.

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“I don’t really think, Sean, that you need to know about my various sexual liaisons. Or that anyone else needs to. I did write about them. I filled a hundred pages of Moleskine notebooks with my one-night stands, my affairs. But I decided they didn’t belong in a professional memoir. First of all, these are real people we’re talking about. Many of them were enjoyable. Some were abject failures. My wife said to me when she read the pages, ‘Of what purpose is this in a memoir? Of what purpose is this other than to titillate?’ The point is, I never see them. It’s because I have nothing in common with them, frankly. And probably didn’t at the time. I could not provide a sensible reason why I married these women. The thing is, in the case of my marriages, it takes two people to fuck up a marriage. It wasn’t simply the fault of these women that I lost interest in them and realised they were insignificant relationships. Which is how I look at them right now–as being insignificant. I see them as blips.”
~ William Friedkin On Cutting Interviewers Off At The Sass

“I have to imagine from Mr. Spielberg’s point of view, the paradigm shift in the 1970s was just the new “normal,” a “halcyon era” from which we are straying in the 21st century–because theatrical exhibition is tenuous (as it has been since the 1940s), the home video market has dried up and people are watching pirated movies on their phone. Spielberg’s coming-of-age era was for him the halcyon period that the 21st century “implosion” will cause to go “crashing into the ground.” But he is wrong. The market for movies is actually diverse and highly segmented–although from the top-down movie industry vantage point and media punditry you would not think this to be true.  Would we really mourn for Mr. Spielberg or ourselves if Lincoln would have been made for cable or had played on public television?  Is it bad for humanity that cable television is creating wonderful, resonant stories in long-form series that people want to watch at home on TV (or streamed onto their computer)? I don’t think so, but it is a paradigm shift and it might affect people’s theatrical moviegoing habits. Televisions in people’s homes have had that effect for seven decades–it is not a new phenomenon. As Art House cinema impresarios we need to focus on what WE can do at our theaters and in our communities. It is not productive for us to fret over what pundits say or about what well-meaning filmmakers like the Stevens–Spielberg and Soderbergh–say. We should fret about what we can do in our communities. What we can do to support filmmakers.”
~ From A Response By Russ Collins, CEO, Michigan Theater – Ann Arbor And Director, Art House Convergence, To Mr. Spielberg